- Build update number two on the Toyota SR86 endurance racecar.
We quickly realised that with such a short timeframe available to build this car,
we didn't have enough hours in the day to do all of the work that was required and
fabrication on this car was a pretty big project in and of itself.
So we called in the pros, the team that have already done such a great job on our Mazda
FD RX7 project car, Lars and James from Vinny Fab up in Christchurch.
They reached out and asked if we needed a hand and we're not ones to look a gift
horse in the mouth so we said yes.
They drove down from Christchurch and immediately got stuck in, producing some
amazing work as usual in an incredibly short timeframe.
I'll hand over to Tim and he can take you through what they achieved.
So we've called in some reinforcements.
We've got the boys from Vinny Fab over here, they've come down to help us for the
weekend.
We've got a bit of a list for them.
So basically they're going to sort out our exhaust turbo back, wastegate, intercooler,
they're custom making an intercooler and everything for the car, all the piping.
For us it's just a really big help, we've got a really great fabricator here but we've got so
much work to do, it's great to have some help.
He's going to give us a really good boost to get the car a bit further along and
hopefully get it out a bit earlier to do some good testing.
Looking forward to a busy weekend.
So the guys have only been at it for a couple of hours, made some pretty good progress
already.
On one side of the table, the intercooler's coming together.
It's going to have some mounts coming out the top tanks there.
On the other side of the table we're starting work on modifications to the exhaust manifold.
And they've already done a new outlet on the turbo, it's still in progress but they're
well into their work here.
Looking good.
So the boys from Vinny Fab are less than 24 hours into the build here and they've
made some fantastic progress.
Let's show you around.
So they've got the intercooler mounted right on top of the radiator there.
Done a great job getting some nice mounts on the top.
We'll also be adding some more bracing down here to the front of the car so that'll be nice
and solidly mounted.
We've got the wastegate nicely mounted on there, all finished up, lots of room.
We'll be moving, this wiring and everything will be coming out of here, getting redone,
otherwise temperature could be a bit of a problem there.
We've got the downpipe in and we're running about halfway down the car, almost to the
gearbox, that's all done.
Turbo outlet's been modified, turbo inlet's been modified for a V band clamp which
is nice, now from here they're going to be doing the intercooler piping, we're just
sorting out the last of the V band clamps and they're getting close to wrapping up.
So the jobs left for the boys is going to be the inlet to the intercooler here, coming
through here, joining up to the turbo, same thing with the outlet at the
intercooler, up to the throttle body, got the blowoff valve will sit somewhere around here.
The wastegate outlet which used to be run down here next to the downpipe and will
join back into the downpipe out of the turbo somewhere before the end of the transmission.
We'll find a place for the turbo inlet to plumb back into the air filter.
At the moment we plan on having a duct running from the back of the radiator up through the
bonnet, we just need to plan a little bit, we'll probably just bring it hard down this
side which will give us a little bit more room on the radiator 'cause we don't really want
to be in a position where that, where we've got the turbo inlet interfering with the duct
and making that more complicated that it needs to be.
This is the view from underneath the car with the turbo downpipe where it's at at the moment.
So up there we can see the exhaust manifold and the outlet of the wastegate up there.
So that's not quite on the right angle at the moment but we are going to rotate that a
little bit and bring it down through here and merge it back into the downpipe somewhere
before we get to the transmission mark just because there's not that much room to
fit two pipes through there, we should be fine getting one three inch pipe.
The guys made a fair bit more progress here.
Downpipe's on the wastegate and is joined into the turbo downpipe.
Outlet of the turbo into the intercooler's coming along well.
So it's just going to run pretty straight along here into the top of the intercooler.
We've got it running like that because we want to leave ourselves plenty of room for a
duct here.
And this side's getting prepared as well to the outlet we're running up there.
Looking good.
Here's one of the turbo outlet pipes, got some bungs welded in there for temperatures and
pressures at the outlet of the turbo.
James is getting ready to do the final weld up on the intercooler.
This is how it looks as it's all tacked up.
Just getting ready for the final weld.
Vinny Fab boys have just finished up for the night, just gone home, made some really
good progress today, let's have a look.
So we've got everything for the intake and intercooler buttoned up for the moment.
See straight from the turbo it loops through to give us some room through the engine
bay there, right into the top of the intercooler.
Nice little loop back, straight into the inlet.
Really short runs so really nice, got the blow off valve mounted there.
Wastegate, downpipe all mounted, all finished up, really nicely packaged,
looks great.
So from underneath the car we can see the exhaust from the wastegate nicely tied in
to the main exhaust so tomorrow the boys will run the exhaust down through here, through the
gearbox, right up to somewhere around the diff at the back here.
We're going to get them to leave it, somewhere around here this area we're going to try run it
hard up against the cross member but finish somewhere about here because once they
are done and have gone home, we will be looking to start mounting the diffuser and
look at how we're going to package the exhaust and everything around that.
We've got a fair few ideas about how we're going to manage that but we won't know
exactly how it's going to package until we get the diffuser set on there and there's a
few other things we need to get right before we can finalise exactly where all the aero
components go.
Got to do some suspension mock up and stuff like that and then we'll know where
all the aero bits are going to go.
But overall really happy with how it's come out so far.
So tomorrow's job, going to finish off the exhaust run to the back and then also run
the intake in here and along here.
So the original position of the air filter was somewhere around here and it ran up into the
centre of the inlet there with the V8.
We decided the best way to package it, well it's quite a convenient place to have
the filter, there's a fair bit of room up here with the bumper coming over to the crash
bar and it's an easy place to feed cold air to it as well.
So instead we think we're going to package it somewhere around here.
Have a slight bend in here and run it up somewhere in that proximity up to the front
of the turbo.
The reason we want to keep it over to this side and not run it straight over the top to
the turbo is we're going to have to build a duct for the radiator and intercooler outlet
and we want to use this area up here so sort of higher and more to one side of the car,
the more room we'll have to build a nice smooth duct there without having to have
too many notches.
We'll have to see exactly how much room we've got 'cause it's always a bit tighter than you
think.
So that's the end of the massive weekend here at HPA.
Thanks a lot to the Vinny Fab guys who came in and saved us.
Put in a massive effort to get everything done, well all the welding, intercooler piping, intake
and everything down the front of the car, new intercooler, new exhaust, fantastic job.
Everything here you can see they've done, brand new intercooler, custom end tanks,
everything over the top of the engine, really short runs to everything, new inlet,
new exhaust, plumbed in with the wastegate and everything, looks fantastic.
Ready to start again tomorrow on the rest of the jobs of which there are plenty.
- So that's where we're at at the moment.
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